That’s a really important point to remember, the goal you set must stem from your own needs and wants.

What’s in your heart is what you really want.

Really, if you follow your heart you will find that you are becoming right with the world. Things will begin to work and produce results desired.

What I’m saying is, goals don’t come from a grab-bag of ideas that are written on the wall, or something you read on the internet about being successful.

Your real goals are the reactions that you have about the world that you live in.

A real goal is your intelligent response to your environment, and your idea of how to navigate it, deal with it and make something out of it.

Your goals must come from the heart.

Imagine, you want to write something. It could be a blog post or it could be a book or similar. You can only successfully complete a good piece of writing if you know what you are talking about.

You do your research, you discover a few things on the subject which are highly interesting to you, and your readers. You have found something which gets you going, it fires you up so that you can clearly see what must be done to achieve a good Blogpost or article.

The work you do on a blogpost soon becomes very important to you. It becomes a personal mission. You feel it deep down.

You know that you are working from a powerful stand-point that will reap good results.

It must reflect your own environmental needs so that you can make progress in your business and life itself.

Being sincere about the goals you set is essential to a successful outcome, this outcome is a desire or need that you can see in your mind. You know that you need more money, who doesn’t? You know that you should study harder and that study will lead to better opportunities, or make you more skillful in your daily tasks.

This is known as causality. Increasing knowledge, income, living standards etc, will increase other aspects of your life and therefore improve that area of life.

Your self-image is directly connected with the successful outcome of your goals. Causality is you connecting the dots accurately and then joining them up in your mind.

The goal you set must connect with the person you are – otherwise, there will be a big gap in the logicality of your motivations and reaching your goal.

Don’t allow the blurry bits of your Goals to go unchecked – you must deal with them.

Self-image is who you are right now. It dictates a lot about your actions, and what you are motivated to do. We all possess a self-image, it gives us a sense of presence and reflection in a complex world.

We can develop self image to become stronger minded, more self-disciplined in our actions.

I’ve known highly skilled people who aren’t very successful with their skill because of a lack of self-discipline.

Like the young artists and writers who, quite rightly, try and identify with their new activity by “acting the part” instinctively. The problem is that they were trying to work with the terribly negative self-image of an artist.

The image they worked with had nothing to do with personal experience, but was more to do with what the world of non-artists believed a writer or painter should be like. A person who hasn’t got a clue about anything, mooning about all day, lost in their thoughts.

The same is true of people who want to begin a business. The idea that they must start acting the part can lead to false motivations and attempts at putting it on, faking it, as if this will increase their competence. It won’t.

They would start to follow the rules of being a deep thinking, slow working, slightly messed up artist or business person, one who doesn’t care for self-discipline and planning their work.

Little did they now at the time, artist such as Picasso and Salvador Dalí, were secretly highly disciplined workers who got on with the job. And, finished their work.

All successful business people have a problem with discipline – it’s a natural tendency to avoid the hard stuff, stay at home think about great deeds tomorrow rather than getting out there to do it, and finish it, today.

Finishing the work is the only way to discover what the goal really is all about. Until then, it’s a vision in our minds. It’s an aspiration towards something we believe will be good for us.

If our aspiration is lacking in it’s reflection of reality, then we will veer from the path and end up in a muddy ditch somewhere – probably down the pub with a few pints to drown our sorrows.

Your self-image gives you a level of self-esteem.

The two are not quite the same thing but work closely together.

Self esteem will motivate you to get on with the work. You are a person who takes action in order to find out if the goal is worth anything. Solid self-esteem is character, strong personality, it’s the building blocks of your life of being effective at reaching your goals.

Self-Image is more of the internal summing up of who you see yourself as; the person you know is in the image. It’s a visual synopsis of all that you are.

Self-image stems from the more active self-esteem.

Self esteem is the driver, the character who knows that they are capable of carrying out the tasks set before them.

By building and working on your self-esteem you can experience change in your life that shifts your mind and thoughts from one powerful state to the next higher powerful mental state.

Planning your days, your life, is a matter of knowing yourself to the point that you understand what makes You tick.

Understanding your needs and your values gives you insight into how to plan things so that they slot into your daily life, and the people who are living life alongside you.

Steven Pinker, the psychologist and linguist, has created a video that explains how the language we use helps us to understand our deeper selves and our values. Sloppy thinking leads to a sloppy lifestyle.

Are we in control of our decisions?

We are driven by our needs and our desires. We exercise control over what we allow to happen and what not. Sometimes we can’t control, so it seems that things went wrong and we blame ourselves for being stupid. When in fact, we weren’t being stupid. Maybe, our unconscious desires and needs already made the decision to motivate us towards an action, and kept us away from an unsuitable action.

We can plan, and we still don’t know if the plan will work. Only, and ever, will action show us that what we do, what we have planned, works or doesn’t. Action is what we are built for – thinking is our compass of ideas that help us to orientate into the right direction.

When we combine the ideas of having an unconscious mind that helps us, and a conscious mind that sees the world, makes judgements and choices, and then decides to do something, the idea that to know oneself is a powerful idea that can only lead to more success.

To ignore the importance of planning in conjunction with our true self, is to be foolish and is looking for failure.

Planning a business, a blog, a piece of writing or a wedding is all about understanding the intimate thoughts and feelings of our lives, and what it really means to us.

What life means to us as individuals is bound up in our self-esteem and our self-image. That’s where the gold is.

Main Points to remember

Planning requires that you know yourself – if you wish to be successful.

Self-Esteem is a reflection of your true values.

Self-image is a basic synopsis of who you see yourself as in the world – how you fit in.

We don’t have total conscious control over decision making. It is a result of our self-esteem and our personal values that drives goals and outcomes.

Don’t be afraid to set high goals in order to find out who you really are in life.

Self-Knowledge is a power. It will give you so much feedback and help to keep you on a successful path in life and business

Living is a creative process of finding out about things by doing things. Sitting around thinking about the value of a decision or idea, is a great way to waste life.

You can never come to a decision about anything by thinking about it only. You must act to know.

Never quit, unless you know that something you are doing is working against the grain of your true self-esteem and self-image.

Learn to trust your creative instincts; they are you unconscious mind giving you prompts and new ideas.

Thanks for reading this post, please let me know what you think about this subject – I’m very interested to know what you have planned.